Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou gets approval to move to bigger, $13 million mansion
Her current $5 million, six-bedroom home is too exposed to the public, where people sometimes approach the house
May 9 2019
Huawei’s chief financial officer may still be under house arrest in Canada but she’s on the move — to her newly renovated $13 million mansion.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia approved Meng Wanzhou’s petition Wednesday to modify her bail terms, which included a request to move from her $5 million, six-bedroom residence near a park, to an estate more than triple the size in one of Vancouver’s toniest neighbourhoods. She’ll be just two doors down from the U.S. consul general’s residence, where the star-spangled banner flaps on the front lawn.
“The existing home is a corner lot, exposed on three sides, there isn’t clarity between public and private portions,” one of Meng’s defence lawyers, David Martin, told the court. “Currently, large numbers of people go there, sometimes approach the house.”
Such nuisances would be minimized with the move. The new home in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood is larger and enclosed, allowing her paid bail monitors “to carry out their duties more effectively and fully within the gated property,” Martin said. Meng plans to relocate on Saturday, according to an affidavit filed by her bail monitor.
Meng’s bail conditions, which allow her to freely roam a 62-square kilometre patch of Vancouver as long as she’s accompanied by her monitors, contrasts starkly with that of two Canadians detained by China on national security grounds shortly after her arrest.
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor will soon mark five months in secret jails, where they’ve had just a handful of consular visits combined. China accuses Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, of spying and Spavor, a North Korea travel guide, of supplying him with intelligence. They’ve been held in isolation and questioned multiple times a day in cells where the lights can’t be turned off.
Meng was in court Wednesday as her lawyers laid out their strategy for her defence, arguing that her constitutional rights were violated when she was detained for three hours at the Vancouver airport before her arrest at the request of U.S. authorities. They also plan to question “double criminality,” disputing that what the U.S. alleges she did — lied to banks to trick them into conducting transactions for Huawei that may have violated U.S. sanctions — constitutes a crime in Canada.
Her next scheduled court appearance is Sept. 23.
On the same day Meng was in court, China held an appeal hearing for Robert Schellenberg, the Canadian who was sentenced to death for drug smuggling.
The intermediate-level court in northeastern Liaoning province said Schellenberg’s sentence would be announced at an unspecified date.
Convicted of playing a central role in a methamphetamine smuggling operation, Schellenberg was initially sentenced to 15 years in November, only to be handed the death sentence at a hastily-scheduled January retrial.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned Schellenberg’s sentencing in January and accused China of “arbitrarily” applying the death penalty.
Schellenberg, who was arrested in 2014, has maintained his innocence.
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